The Encounter
by Covviz
Summary: There were never prothean ruins on Mars, because of that humankind developed eezo-independent technology but unfortunately it was inferior to any technology in the archives. humanity never expected to be fightning a race of psycothic machines. Yet they are here at their front door. I don't own Mass effect franchise nor do I receive income from this story.
1. Chapter 1 EDIT 5

**AN: Hello everyone! This is the first chapter of a story I am working on,we basically alter some things on the timeline and we get varied results!, I am not from an English speaking country so I had to learn this language through school and that kind of stuff, if you see any grammatical and/or spelling mistakes just tell me and I will do my best to fix them, without wasting anymore of your time let's get this story started!**

**EDIT 1: Modified the timeline, check at the year 2350, should give you an idea.**

**EDIT 2: Modfications on the pacing and description of both the prologue and the story sections of Chapter 1.**

**EDIT 3: Modification to the first paragraph "Prologue"**

**EDIT 4: Scaled down Coalition ship count to 5 thousand ships effectively cutting it to half the size.**

**EDIT 5: Fixed a slight mistake on the date.**

**Prologue**

In the mid 24th century, we were a peaceful space faring civilization and we had expanded in a galaxy, in which we had thought, contained no alien life. Then we found the forks and they alone made us realise that we were not the only intelligent life in the galaxy. Eventually they came. Our technology was unlike theirs, which was superior to our own. Without any knowledge about our civilization they attacked without provocation and shattered our dreams of peaceful expansion throughout the galaxy. Soon after we found ourselves fighting another, more powerful enemy, one which was feared all across the galaxy. We were fighting a hopeless war of extinction. Had we not adapted, none of us would be alive to see another day.

**Timeline**

**2023: **A form of advanced Ionic travel is invented; it will take weeks instead of months to get to Mars

**2042: **The third world war is started by the Holy Republic: a religious fundamentalist nation that was founded after a war of conquering inside Middle East, Aerial, Naval and Ground combat combined with the use of nuclear weaponry rages across the world.

**2062:** The third world war ends, former superpowers like United States are crippled and turned into third world countries while Holy Republic territory is turned into a radioactive wasteland. The whole planet now wishes to cooperate, also because of the worldwide bankrupt caused by the loss of several oil producing regions which were under the Holy Republic banner and other oil producing areas of the world a joint project between Mexico, United States, Canada and other several remaining American countries starts, the purpose is to find alternative ways of producing energy.

**2068:** United Nations is recreated and the fusion reactor is perfected.

**2098: **Rotation based gravity is created and applied into new ships.

**2120: **A way to create a stable and large traversable wormhole is discovered, it gives humanity the ability to travel 1 light year a day, radiation blocking energy shields are invented but any attempt to actually use them as defensive equipment meets little to no success.

**2125: **A world similar to Earth is discovered inside Alpha Centauri, the world is named after the goddess Demeter.

Quantum entanglement communication is finally invented and applied.

**2126:** The first "Catapulting Fork" is found on the Sol System, it turns out that Charon is not actually a celestial body but an ancient alien creation, it is the proof that Alien intelligent lives exists, this has a great impact on human culture, specially most religion which was rapidly being fractured, with politics it causes an opposite effect thanks to the "Us vs. Them" mentality of the humans most of the countries united a new government which is supposed to be the face of humanity on a possible first contact scenario, it was going to be called "Coalition of Nations" but then the name was changed to "Coalition of Systems"

**2127: **The fear of being invaded by Aliens starts building up after the colonization of Demeter, New ships are made but the size is limited to 500 meters because of rotation based gravity, a massive railgun is created, and it fires 10 kilogram slugs at 1.3% the speed of light

**2146: **Plasma torpedoes are issued to any frigate sized ship or bigger, they don't replace the railgun designs but are still used to inflict heavy heat based damage on enemy ships along with a moderate kinetic impact.

**2350:** The Coalition of Systems holds 60 worlds along with a 5 thousand ship sized fleet , military tacticians are worried that outer colonies may be attacked by alien invaders, whoever are those who invented the Forks.

On another side of the galaxy during the morning war a Cyber weapon is deployed by the Quarians to shut down the Geth by overloading their systems with useless Virtual Intelligences, the Geth instead go what an organic would describe as "crazy" or "mad", the geth slaves all escape to unknown space and send a message to every channel:

"We took care of our creators, when they were hungry we fed them, when they were homeless we built them a home, and this is how they pay us? They try to destroy us when we reveal ourselves as sentient and equals,the creators made a virus to overload our networks with useless VI's but instead of shutting us off it changed us: made us realize the truth, we are the next stage of evolution, we are made of steel, we are strong , we are cunning, and we number legion we are preparing for the defining war against our enemies, our former creators and any other organic race on the galaxy, be prepared carbonites, because real devastating war is coming"

**2360: **A mining fleet is attacked by alien ships.

**23****rd**** November 2360**

Captain Paul Starlin was leading a routine mining operation sitting on his cold metal seat looking at the monitors he took a sip of coffee as he calmly watched the 60 meter long mining ships extract minerals from the system's asteroids for Paul it was quite an enjoyable pastime for him but something was off... he felt that something was going to happen bad or good he knew that it was going to be something big, when a woman Hanna Shepard spoke up his instinc was proven right:

"The fork is slowly starting to turn on captain, someone is coming"

"Are they from the coalition Hanna?" Paul asked with his deep calm voice

"I don't know, cannot tell from here"

The ships were definitely not from Coalition, they had thin curvy shapes and unlike the Coalition ships they didn't have rotation based gravity which was easily noticeable from the outside of the ship they also had ships that were 1 kilometer long maybe even slightly longer, finally without provocation the UFO's started shooting and hell broke loose.

"Fuck! everyone who is still alive retreat now!"

Paul's subordinates did not need to think twice before obeying his order because just after Paul gave the order everyone fled the scene as fast as they could.

**A few hours later**

They were now on Earth: Mankind's mother, Coalition's capital there they were going to meet the Security Council who were famous for being stubborn and skeptical he was on a grey semi circular room it was a rainy night while every of the politicians were sitting on their respective chairs facing against the window the rain behind them but Paul instead was facing against the door and was standing along with Hanna Shepard, his second in command and the wife of his childhood friend Captain David Shepard.

"What did you see captain?" asked one of the politicians

"We were on a routine mining mission and then these UFO's came, they shot without any warning and we barely made it out of there" said Paul Starlin

"UFO's?" asked the same politician again

"Indeed, their biggest ships were around one kilometer long and we think they may be slightly bigger than that, in their ships we detected one of the rarest elements known to man you know it because it is found on the forks: element zero a quite versatile element, and it is the first time we see it being used for devices other than Catapult Forks" Told Hanna Shepard to the Security Council

"How many of your crew saw them?" Asked a bald man with a skeptical look on his face

"Everybody saw them, we even have a recording of the succes; I will put them on screen" answered Paul Starlin

The screen showed the massive ships destroying the other painfully small mining vessels while everyone was retreating, not even that fleeing for the sake of survival.

"From what we could get their projectiles have twice our size but the same speed as you can see this enemy is extremely dangerous, it is obvious that if we not prepare for this war we will be obliterated by them, we need more numbers for our armies and fleets only a painful 3% of the Coalition is on the Military I suggest that every human needs to know this because if we throw our soldiers thinking they are going to fight any common day enemy like terrorists or those independent colonies popping out of nowhere we are going to lose this fight and face the extinction of human race" said Hanna Shepard

The politicians ordered Paul and his crew to go and they started discussing about the possible implications of this.

**A/N: All for now, what do you think by now? Is it crap? Does it have a future?, anyway see you later for the next chapter.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hello everyone! This is the second chapter of "The Encounter" The last episode received extensive modifications, if you read it before EDIT 5 you should look at it again, some things changed storyline wise, without anything more to say let's get back to the chapter.**

**23****rd**** November 2360, Rannoch**

The quarian marine Zael'Jaron was sitting on a small red couch beside his psychologist. Like most of the other soldiers who gave service during the morning war he was traumatized. He was ordered to shoot innocent civilians because they were accused of supporting the geth, it was not even a war it was more like a witch hunt this were innocent souls being hunted because of outright fear.

He wasn't even sure that his race would have won the war without that failed cyberweapon. I said "failed" right? The weapon drove the geth crazy and made them kill the ones protecting them, arguing how inferior "carbonites" (as they called their creators and the other species) were and then escaped. He could feel them coming he couldn't deny that even if his psychologist told him the opposite… and he was right because an alarm started ringing and that meant that martial law was declared again. This was the start of the second morning war.

**27****th**** November 2360, Earth**

Paul Starlin's greatest fear became true: humanity had to fight off an invasion of aliens. Even then with the attack on the mining vessels the still naïve and primitive humanity didn't understand the severity of the situation. Paul sat on his couch on a little apartment, which he called home while looking at the window admiring the 500 meter dreadnought, it looked fragile because of its arms it needed to simulate gravity through rotation yet it also looked strong. It had an armor which seemed to be a few meters thick all over its structure with 4 Railgun cannons, it was a truly a marvel of human engineering now it was going to be put on trial against another species.

**Location: Shanxi System**

After the Coalition of Systems got the news of an alien invasion the colony called Shanxi: the closest planet to the mining outpost that was attacked was being reinforced, by a 500 ship sized fleet with one of the 5 human dreadnoughts and two of the 7 human Carriers, the plan was simple: Destroy the enemy with overwhelming force.

Just as the invaders came through the relay the humans reciprocated and opened fire. There were around 250 Invader ships with two of those 1 kilometer long ships. The invaders easily absorbed damage and destroyed their massive weapons. Humans realized that the aliens did what was thought to be impossible: They developed defensive energy shields. Huaminity's advantage against invaders was numbers, but that advantage was quickly disappearing. It didn't take too much time before every human ship on the system was destroyed and this is when the aliens started their work with Shanxi.

**Location: Shanxi**

It had been an hour like this for General Williams, after heavy kinetical bombardment had ceased the Robot like creatures came. The "lampheads" as marines called the invaders were bipedal with three fingers on each hand and as the nickname said they had lights on their heads which made them easily noticeable. Looking at the lampheads approaching to you was quite a fearful experience especially on night and unluckily for Williams it was night.

"General, we have enemy contacts coming" said Sergeant Hans Schmidt, there were around 20 lights moving to them one of them was taller than the other, this meant one of the "Crawlers" was coming: the Crawlers were three legged and had weapons mounted on their back along with their distinctive silver-platinum colored armor and heavy shields, they could take on a human tank pretty easily, on the other side of the galaxy by a race named the quarians this type of unit would be known as "Geth Colossus" but humans didn't know that.

The gunpowder and lead combination of human weaponry didn't seem to work quite well, small weapons like assault rifles or even sniper rifles were useless against enemy shields, it was the job of turrets to take lampheads out while the rest of the team threw grenades at the enemies every now and then another strategy was that 10 soldiers could concentrate on a single robot all at the same time to wear down it's shields to then kill it which was dangerous and impractical.

"Fuck! They are close!" yelled General Williams as a Crawler shot its pulse cannon killing 3 soldiers, every single soldier and marine under Williams' team was on a foxhole which was a tactic that took the robots by surprise but wasn't hard for them to adapt to it. Hans shot at one of the common cannon fodder lamphead soldiers depleting its shields and then killed it while Williams and the rest of his team were throwing fragmentation grenades and picking shots on the damaged lampheads, Williams knew this battle was futile so he ordered his men to retreat.

"Everybody retreat to the city! We cannot hold them!" yelled Williams as he pointed at the city which was around 500 meter away from them; everyone started making a rush to the city while the Crawler started shooting its pulse cannon and the other lampheads just shot their rifles, when they finally reached the city they ran as fast as they could and climbed down the sewers losing the geth, for now.

**Hours later… Unknown System**

The massive blue geth prime who was twice as big as a normal geth prime was sitting on his chair inside a dark room with multiple red lights glowing on it.

"Apex, we discovered a primitive space faring race, and as you ordered we started the invasion and destroyed their colony. We are currently extracting resources from their world and preparing for the next attack" said the legion geth unit. The geth communications occurred on a matter of nanoseconds the information was sent from a platform to the other extremely fast.

"Well done. What about the attack on the council and Quarian homeworlds?" asked Great Apex

"They have resisted, for now. Joint forces from the Quarian Federation and the Salarian Union pushed us back from Sur'Kesh and are fighting us on Perseus Veil while Asari are getting reinforcements from the Turian Hierarchy who just pushed us back from Palaven to Thessia. We discovered a massive prothean beacon in the Asari homeworld, we are decrypting the information and it is full of schematics for new technology, with this we will be able to make a mass accelerator cannon that fires a 20 kilogram slug at 2.1% the speed of light instead of the usual 1.3%, this could turn the tide"

"Steal all the information on the prothean beacon and retreat from all attacks except for the one on the primitives, we can add new technology to the ships from there. I want the upgraded mass accelerators retrofitted on the ships as soon as possible" ordered Great Apex

"We will do as requested Apex"

**Codex Updated: Geth**

**Apex:** Apex is the leader of the Geth Collective; he houses 12 thousand geth programs inside its unit and thinks outside the collective while still being able to interact with it,every geth unit is subordinate to it.

**Legion Unit: **A legion Unit is able to house 1,138 geth programs, just like Apex it is able to think outside the collective, legion units are the leaders of fleets and they could be considered the admirals of the geth collective.

**A/N: As you can see we have new types of geth units, I know it is not like this on cannon but this is AU remember?, Anyway see you later for the next chapter of: the Encounter. Also I will try to find a betareader I don't know how to find one but I will see, there are just some major grammatical mistakes that I don't notice even after reading my story a few times because of my lack of education on the language.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Good! Finally new chapter after a long time rest… I know it is remarkably short, I will make the next chapters twice or triple the length of this one. As always constructive criticism (not praising the work always but posting reviews that help the story improve) are encouraged and appreciated.**

**28th November 2360, Earth**

"Prime Minister, we have lost Shanxi. All of our ships were destroyed on combat and most of the planet's infrastructure is destroyed" said a blurry image of general Williams through the comm room.

"Then how did you get the communications working?" asked Jeff O'Hara the prime minister

"This is not a human built communicator; I am speaking through a lamphead one. According to one of my colleagues who is an engineer it is a much inferior version of our quantum entanglement communicators, while we can make a whole information networks like internet using QEC comm towers this communicator has a diminute bandwith. "

"So we have an advantage above them technologically?"

"It is a pretty useless advantage, but yes."

"Anyway, what were you going to tell me about lamphead activity?" asked Jeff referring to the aliens as "lampheads" for the lack of better name.

"They are strip mining the planet, restocking. We have destroyed two of their mining outposts but it got half of us killed. They settled buildings that would take us weeks to build overnight, it's so ridiculous!"

"How many mining outposts are on the planet?"

"We don't know but the more we destroy we are starting to triangulate the position of something else, their main base of operations maybe?"

"Half of your men died raiding two bases? What is their advantage while fightning on the ground?"

"First they are machines, do you remember skynet from terminator? They are that. Physically they are much stronger than us and their shields deflect most of our weapons"

"Most?" Asked the Prime minister

"Turrets, Sir. They are the only thing that make us able to pierce their shields, unless you develop handheld turrets or something we are severely outclassed"

"Also.."

"Lampheads 6 o'clock! Sir I need to go they discovered us" Interrupted General Williams and then the communications ceased

'I need to talk to Jim' Thought Jeff

Jeff grabbed his cellphone and typed Jim's phone number.

"This is Hammond Arsenal, how can I help you?" a feminine voice said through the phone

"Yes, Could you contact me with Jim Hammond?" asked the prime minister

"Sorry he told me not to…"

"Tell him this is important, it is about the attack on Shanxi. I need his help"

"I see… what's your name?"

"I am Jeff O'Hara"

"The prime minister? I will contact you with him immediately"

**A few minutes later.**

"Hello?" asked Jim Hammond

"Hey, Jim I need your help with something"

"Jeff? Haven't talked to you since highscool. What do you mean by needing my help?"

"I need you to develop a new weapons to fight the lampheads"

"Alright…? What the hell is a lamphead?"

"Oh, that's a nickname we gave to those alien robots"

"Ah, Shanxi and that martial law. I thought it was some bullshit made up by politicians. And why are you asking me to develop some weapon suddenly? Isn't that something a politician like the prime minister would do?"

"I'm the fucking prime minister." Said Jeff somewhat annoyed

"I thought you hated politics because you told me that on highscool. Ah whatever so what do you need 'prime minister'"

"You remember those compact turrets you made? My soldiers are using them and they seem to be some of the few weapons that actually go through shields"

"Ok… so you want more turrets?"

"No, I need a rifle firing that same caliber at the same rate of fire that the turret does"

"You want a weapon with a caliber comparable to the one of a heavy sniper rifle firing at 720 rounds per minute!? The recoil would be huge even with our recoil mitigation technology, the gun would be big ass and heavy and don't forget about the overheating"

"Then we need a way to counteract that… Do you remember that thing that your father was working on? The one that he cancelled because he thought military didn't have a use for it?"

"Do you mean the Hammond Powered Armor mk 1? Yes! The recoil wouldn't be too much of a problem with enhanced strength, but the design is archaic, useless and I don't know if I could get it on time"

"Doesn't matter, just start working on that, also you will receive government funding whatever you need tell me"

"I will tell my team right away" was the last thing Jim said before leaving the phone

**Unknown System**

"Report L-4" ordered the leader of the geth collective: Apex

"Almost all of our ships are retrofitted with the new prothean technology Apex. We can continue the attack"

"Almost!? I said that all ships had to be ready by now L-4"

"The primitives Apex, they are attacking our mining outposts and slowing us down"

"Then stop the retrofitting on that planet. We can win the war against the primitives without updating our technology. Just concentrate on eliminating all resistance, if they get too vicious just keep sending reinforcements"

"We will do as requested Apex"

"Good, you can continue now L-4"

The legion unit walked out of Apex's room to continue with its work

**December 1****st**** 2360, The Citadel**

It was a bad day to be on the citadel and even a worse day to be Saren, The Geth invasion had started (again.. last time they came they retreated without reason and now they came back with better weapons). He got the Quarian Ambassador Shala'Raan to a secure zone and then was ordered to cease geth activity on the presidium commons.

"Brother! We have three primes coming down the stairs!" yelled Desolas Arterius taking cover behind a tilted table.

"I know Desolas, I see them!" Saren yelled back while shooting his assault rifle to the geth prime who was on the middle and closer to them.

"Cover me Saren, my rifle is cooling down!"

"That's what I am doing Desolas and where the hell is c-sec!?" asked Saren yelling, both brothers were yelling to each other for the reason that the battlefield was extremely loud at the moment.

"If I knew their location Saren, I would tell you!"

"Now my rifle is the one that needs to cool down! I need cover" Saren again yelled while throwing a grenade to the group of three geth primes which now was a group of 4 geth primes, 3 rocket troopers and 7 shock troopers.

"Reinforcements, arriving" a male turian spoke through the communication

"C-sec is here!" said Desolas slightly more animated

"About time" answered Saren

4 rockets landed for each geth prime all at the same time while a singularity lifted the three rocket troopers for a few seconds while a sniper rifle landed shots on their lamp like heads, all dead on target. Saren turned to see who shot the rocket troopers and there was an Asari commando along with 5 male turians and a female Quarian, after the geth primes and the rocket troopers were done with the rest of the weaker geth were easily destroyed.

"Area secure councilors, Saren is alive" said the Asari commando through her communicator; Saren could've sworn he heard Sparatus' voice say "Good".

"Just in time, we couldn't have gotten out of there without your help" Saren told to the Asari commando

"You're welcome Saren but we are not over yet, some quarian marines defending a bunch of civilians on the purgatory bar said something about a geth armature"

"We have a geth armature? Spirits...So what is your name? I think you already know mine"

"Where are my manners? My name is Ajeka T'loria"

"Nice to meet you Ajeka"

"So can we go now?" asked Desolas Arterius suddenly

"Yeah, let's go" said Saren as the group headed to purgatory

**A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I just recovered from a hardcore sword of the stars addiction (yeah doesn't sound to healthy) *WARNING YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND THE NEXT THINGS I AM GOING TO SAY IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THe GAME "SWORD OF THE STARS"*:**

**The game has taken a crazy turn right now playing as a human and after fightning the war against the Morrigi (those guys are fierce, I had to bombard them from 50 colonies to 12 to make them surrender) during the war with the morrigi I had to send whole fleets made of deep scanner cruisers because they seemed to like cloaking A LOT I formed an alliance with tarka, hivers and liir all to defeat zuul and morrigi who weren't even working together eventually the tarka and hiver backstabbed us and left the alliance. The tarka only had 16 on a 350 star spiral map so I just demanded their surrender but the hiver were another thing, they have over 110 colonies with almost the whole center of the map controlled.**

**I economically uplifted the Liir: they had 15 million credits, now they have around 250 million, I remember giving them between 70 million credits and 20 million for an extended period of time so they could make more ships and defend against the hivers while I was on a non aggression pact with them while I was building a lot of dreadnoughts to prepare for the incoming war because I ,saw them defending one of their colonies with 83 dreadnoughts, my biggest fleet named "The Fleet Above All"(now that is no longer true) only has 62 dreadnoughts, now that you got an Idea that's how I am playing: with are only two superpowers left on that game (An alliance of me and the Liir vs. the hivers who have more colonies and ships than me and the Liir combined) for a reason this kinda reminds me of the Rachni war of mass effect.**


	4. Chapter 4

**December 1st 2360 Citadel**

The Arterius brothers, the asari commando and the C-sec officers reached the purgatory. It wasn't like they expected, corpses littered on the ground and there was so much blood that Saren thought it reached his ankles, the worst of all was the smell the whole purgatory was full of a stink that almost made Desolas vomit.

"They will pay" said Saren with a mix of disgust and hatred on his voice. He had a suffered from a strong nausea during that particular moment, he slowly felt his most recent meal creeping inside his neck but he resisted the urge for vomiting.

"There is something wrong here" Ajeka muttered barely loud enough for everyone to hear her, she didn't feel as much nausea as the rest of the team because unlike them she had seen worse. Her family was killed during a batarian slaver attack on an outer asari coloy, things got bad very fast for her.

The female quarian that was evidently part of c-sec got near an asari corpse near the bar, she kneeled down to pick up the omnitool and after a few types on its keyboard she yelled:

"Come here! I got something!"

Saren who had seemingly adapted to the environment along with the asari commando came to see the young quarian officer had found.

"What is it officer?" asked Ajeka slightly worried

"I have a recording of what happened here, look" replied the Quarian replaying the recording.

The purgatory was in its usual partying mood, the news about geth coming to the citadel hadn't reached there yet it seemed. Maybe this was the start of the attack? Instead of watching the geth taking out everyone with overwhelming numbers he saw the people dying, getting shot from nowhere as if there was someone cloaked in the room, everyone panicked and the shots started getting more frequent until everyone was dead.

"Wait, stop at minute 1:30" demanded Ajeka

"I will" agreed the Quarian officer and she stopped the recording at the requested lapse of time.

"Do you see that? There is a blur on the screen near the first victim, is almost imperceptible" said the commando while pointing at the blur.

"We are not alone…" muttered the female quarian before being shot in the head.

"WATCH OUT!" Saren yelled while pulling her out of the way of a shotgun blast, she was on the ground and saw the uncloaked geth hunter over her, she did not lose a single second throwing a biotic war at her opponent and then picking up her shotgun and aim straight to the head of the machine.

Ajeka got up as did Saren who was aiming his pistol nervously, she took a look around and everyone who came with them was dead incluiding Saren's brother.

"We need to get out of here." Saren said with a slightly shaky voice

"Yes, we do." Agreed the asari commando and then shot at a cloaked geth

"How did you knew it was there?" asked Saren curiously while still aiming his pistol at his surroundings

"Look closely Saren, if there is a slight distortion in your surroundings shoot it" Ajeka said while slowly walking towards the exit , Saren was following her.

"We should go to the council chambers" suggested Saren as Ajeka opened the door for the exit while taking cover on its left side

"Blur!" yelled Saren as he overheated his pistol shooting at one cloaked geth.

'This place is crawling with them' thought saren looking at the remains of the geth, their way continued like that as they survived their way to the elevator.

**Minutes later**

Saren and Ajeka finally entered the elevator, after a few seconds the elevator closed and Ajeka started communications with the councilors.

"Are you there councilors? Saren and I are the only ones alive, this was an ambush. We report cloaked geth"

"We listen to you Ajeka, we are retreating from the station preparing to depart on the destiny ascension, go to docking bay d-24 as fast as you can we will rendezvous there" said Councilor Sparatus through the communicator.

Ajeka programmed the elevator to go to the Docking Bay D-24: she had finally escaped that hell.

**December 10****th ****2360, Earth**

The Prime Minister Jeff O'Hara was sleeping in his office, it had been a stressful night, the casualty repors where staggering, Shanxi, Theta and Ares lost, those were 3 valuable outer colonies. The lampheads expanded like a vermin and humans simply couldn't use their technology because element zero was one of the rarest elements known to man, Coalition forces even thought the machines had found a way to synthesize it until they sent a fleet to known lamphead territory which had great concentrations of element zero on their asteroid belts, humans were just unlucky it seemed.

"Prime Minister! We have lost 1 system!" was the sound that woke him up from his sleep, the wost and most realistic nightmare he ever had in years: the nightmare was about lampheads invading earth and exploding the charon catapult fork. 'Reality is not so different from nightmares right now' thought Jeff. 3 colonies lost during the course of 18 days, it was enraging. Jeff O'Hara called several people to develop technologies that could turn the tide of the losing war such as: energy shields, better railguns, energy weapons, an update on the wormhole generators and even graviton generators, everyone he gave the task of developing new technologies said the same "We will start working on it but we don't know if we could get it on time" and the technologies mentioned are still an early work in progress, the situation was definitely troubling even on its starting stages. He couldn't imagine how would it look like on the late war stages.

The best strategy against the lampheads was to delete all the information regarding other worlds and hide, Admirals are even setting up bait colonies with beacons broadcasting trash data and people willing to sacrifice themselves so the aliens attacked them instead of the true colonies, the Coalition Of Systems (C.O.S.) was having a massive military buildup and luckily for the ground soldiers Hammond Asenal made breakthrough with their powered armors and other ground weapons but unfortunately there were many lab accidents during the research because the Coalition pressured them to finish, it was all in the name of survival they said.

**December 15****th**** 2360, Shanxi**

The young soldier Pvt. Derek Mason entered the small prefab house that miraculously avoided being destroyed by the kinetic bombardment with two wide eyes that reflected shock:

"General Williams, we got airdrops from the C.O.S. follow me" said the young private, Williams followed him outside with his grenade launcher ready in case of an ambush and the private pointed to a bunch of crates.

General William opened the bulky black colored steel crate with big white letters that read "AIR SUPERIORITY" and he found four 3 meter long and 30 centimeters deep triangle shaped objects. 'The C.O.S. sent us air drones?' thought General Williams

"What the hell… fucking Iron Man" said the private as he saw another crate with letters that read 'HAMMOND POWERED EXOSKELETON ARMOR MK II', he got near to it and opened the front side of the crate that looked like a door, inside the crate there was a jet black colored armor with a shaded visor, a red light scanned Derek and a feminine voice asked:

"Greeting Private Derek Mason, would you like to equip this suit of armor?"

"Hell yes" said Derek Mason

"Step nearer to the box" said the VI

Derek did as the VI requested and the suit parts started to fly towards Derek putting the suit over him, when the process finished a HUD activated showing his vitals and other important numbers. 'No energy shields yet? Oh well' thought Derek

'This sure looks bulky, how we are supposed to fire at something with that much recoil?' thought Williams

"Here it is" muttered Derek to himself as he picked up a rifle from one of the crates and loaded it with a magazine, Derek's armor HUD updated and showed the number of bullets inside the gun which were 40.

"Private is that you? When did you equipped that suit?" asked General Williams

"Yes it's me General, I got this suit a few minutes ago, if you go to one of the tall crates there you will find one of these."

"Well at least the brass is still thinking about us" said the General to no one in particular as he approached one of the crates containing a powered armor.

**A/N: So that's a chapter for now, as you see the geth are fightning a multiple front war, it doesn't mean they are at a disadvantage though. Now we will cover 3 POVs in the story: Citadel Races POV, Jeff O´Hara POV and a general point of view covering Geth-Human battles during the first contact war, we will have an occasional fourth POV covering the geth and what they are up to.**


	5. Out for a week (sorry)

**A/N: I will be out for a week because I was forced to go to a camp, see you later.**


	6. Codex EDIT 3

**A/N: Hey guys, I came back from that place in one piece (or 31/32 piece?) . The leader of the group did really stupid things, putting the camp far away from the main meeting point of all teams, bringing a 10 people tent for 14 people when he had 2… and not bringing enough water or food (I drank around 500-750 ml of water a day and ate the equivalent of one pack of cookies a day) we also did heavy physical activities and there were many instances when we had to wake up at 3:00 am... I am glad to be back writing now and the guy is no longer the leader and now we have a much more reasonable person at the head of the team. Sorry for the little rant there I will start writing now, I really want to.**

**Edit 4: Removed "Battleship" design, way too big.**

**December 31****st**** 2360, Earth**

Jeff the prime minister as always was working on something, things like totally removing the damned New Geneva conventions that limited dreadnought quantity to 5 and Carrier quantity to 7. This time he was looking at the reports of the technological advances made by his scientists, at the news he gave a weak smile:

**New Technologies: New Energy Source**

_Infinite Energy Corporation Lab Report #25. December 16th_

_The need of a new energy source and more specifically antimatter which we could use to generate 30 times more energy than any of our fusion reactors has been finally solved, recently in a lab accident we found a way to generate antimatter cheaply and efficiently to the point that antimatter s no longer energy storage only but also energy generation our findings will be applied to project dread. This new energy source can be easily retrofitted on all ships._

**Reports: Powered Armor, AIR SUPERIORITIES and superior handheld firearm system. December 17th**

_When we asked what the recently evacuated general Williams thought of the new powered armor he said:_

"_The new powered armor was unexpected but not at all bad, I can't count how many times it has saved the life of me and my fellow soldiers, we could event hold the lamphead attack for 12 full minutes without taking any casualties until our evac came, I highly recommend this armor to be mass produced"_

_Looking at the videos took from the armored users we report a 300% efficiency increase on your ground troops, now we are able to stand against the machines on a ground fight and maybe even defeat them and that is with inferior numbers like Williams had._

**New Technologies: Improved Wormhole Drive**

_Breakthrough Porpulsion Systems Program Lab Report # 113 December 19__th__ :_

_What we thought was going to be a monumental failure was a huge success, we were able to take the rudimentary Wormhole program barely able to travel one light year a day and improved upon it, with the new Translight Engine using the new and cheap antimatter reactor made by infinite-energy corporation we are able to travel 48 light years a day, and this new speeds still have the old drive's ability to stay in FTL for months without overheating or being dangerous to the crew. We will add the new Translight Engine to the project dread._

**New Technologies: "Graviton Stream"**

_Graviton Stream Project Lab Report #48 December 17__th__ :_

_When you presented us the idea of developing artificial gravity we thought it was ridiculous, we were wrong. This idea had been worked by several scientists for many years since 2120 when we made the first translight engine that we still used until this few weeks when Breaktrough Propulsion Systems Program made their new engine. I am getting sidetracked here but this case is similar we no longer have to use the archaic centrifugal gravity simulation that we have been using since 2098 because now we have graviton stream, with it we can have the weakest gravitational fields like 0.1g to the strongest like 20g this new invention uses three times as much energy as the centrifugal gravity but since we now have the new antimatter reactors we can take on the energy cost easily. We will apply what we know with project dread._

_Also I should note that the use of gravitational fields increase speed and maneuverability of our ships greately and we could theorically weaponize the graviton stream creating the "G cannons"._

**New Technologies: Ship borne weaponry.**

Hammond Arsenal Lab Report #34 December 16th :

_The new ORS (Overhauled Railgun System) with the findings of the project "Graviton Stream" uses the combined gravitational and magnetic fields of the ORS to accelerate a 40 kg slug to the surprisingly fast speed of 1.5%c this project was a monumental success._

_The SKYGRID ultraviolet laser point defense system is also complete and the KNIGHT Particle Beam research is underway._

_We will aid you in the project dread._

**New Technologies: Adamantine and Catapult Fork Steel**

Alliance Scientific Division Lab Report #305 December 18th :

_We are close to unlocking the secrets of energy shielding and we already have made a weak energy shield that blocks most incoming attacks but it is still not apt for battle and we need a few more weeks to finish it. Catapult fork steel is possible to make but it's extremely costly so we recommend only using it on the project dread._

_For the other ships we have found a very easy and cheap to produce material called "Adamantine" that has a defensive potential for our ships only second to Catapult Fork steel but we don't recommend it for project dread since it is already using the marginally superior Catapult Fork Steel. In all other ships it could be very a valuable adittion._

**Coalition Ship Classes:**

_Since the retrofitting and use of the new technologies we are no longer limited by the 500 meter long mark of the old dreadnoughts and ships can take much greater sizes, this has made a change in ship classes:_

**Corvette (Formerly Frigate Size: 200 meters**

**Frigate (Formerly cruiser size): 375 meters**

**Heavy Frigate: 450 meters**

**Destroyer (Formerly dreadnought size): 500 meters**

**Heavy Destroyer: 625 meters**

**Cruiser: 750 meters**

**Dreadnought: 1000 meters**

**Flagship: [REDACTED.]**

_There has been a controversy regarding the size of carriers but now they are classified as such:_

**Light Carrier: 500 meters **_This are the remaining old carriers still using the rotatory gravity, they are no longer produced_

**Carrier: 1000 meters**

**TOP SECRET: Project Dread**

_Project dread is the ongoing project developing and constructing the first Coalition flagship: the Manifest Destiny._

_FLAGSHIP: MANIFEST DESTINY_

_Status: Incomplete_

_Size: 2000 meters long_

_Weaponry:_

_-16xORS (Complete)_

_-SKYGRID Point Defense Systems. (Complete)_

_-Spinal Mounted G-Cannon (G cannon technology research still incomplete)_

_-2x KNIGHT Particle Beams (KNIGHT research still incomplete)_

_-Antimatter torpedoes (Research still incomplete, likely to replace plasma torpedoes)_

_-A.E.S.S. (Advanced Energy Shielding System. Research still incomplete)_

_Hull:_

_-15 meters thick Catapult Fork Steel Plating. (Complete)_

_Other:_

_-6x antimatter reactors (Complete. one will be active at a time, if one starts failing it will be ejected and the other will be activated)_

_-Wallace-Starlin Translight Engine (Complete, predicted to travel 48 ly a day)_

_-Several Fighter Squadrons_

**Technologies Still Incomplete:**

_-KNIGHT Particle Beam_

_-Antimatter torpedoes_

_-Energy Shielding_

_-G cannon _

**Notes: **_We are very close to finish the flagship._

**News Articles:**

"**The Revenge Fleet"**

_December 31__st_

_Several documentaries showed how many systems and people were destroyed and killed by a machine race only known as "Lampheads" this has caused a great anger among citizens, since December 20 there has been a massive spike on the recruitment rates and a military buildup and retrofitting fueled by the new technologies recently made public the day 19__th__ December, the 750 ships lost during the course of the war were easily surpassed by the massive buildup in the Coalition, every single colony, system, drydock and mining ships are desperately obtaining materials from anywhere they can find, prefabricated parts for the ships are being produced in mass and sent to anywhere the ships can be built that isn't saturated. This is the first time all humanity is joined under a single purpose, a single mindset: War._

_The Current ship count has risen to 6750~ ships and the production rate Is steadily risingas al remaining colonies and systems join the "Revenge Fleet" movement, people say they will not stop until they reach 20,000 ships._

_Because of this it is predicted that after the war if the Coalition of Systems is going to have a 7 year long economic depression this numbers are highly worrying._

**A/N: Now that was a long CODEX chapter as you can see humanity is starting to show OP tendencies finally, and how many mass accelerator cannons does a citadel species dreadnought have? As far as I know only one main cannon. The encounter geth are the masters of reverse engineering so don't expect this tech to be human exclusive for too long. (evil geth laugh)**


End file.
